The traditional hard drive market has been under assault from various factors over the last several years. One of the biggest factors affecting hard drives has been the decline in the computer industry. With fewer sales of computers, fewer hard drives are required leading to declining profits. At the same time, as notebooks get thinner, manufacturers are increasingly using solid-state drives.

Market research firm iSuppli reports that hard drive market revenue is expected to decline in double-digit numbers during 2013. The research firm is predicting revenue of $32.7 billion for 2013, a decline of 11.8% from 2012. The research firm also believes that revenue for the hard drive market will be flat in 2014 with a revenue forecast of $32 billion.

“The HDD industry will face myriad challenges in 2013,” said Fang Zhang, analyst for storage systems at IHS. “Shipments for desktop PCs will slip this year, while notebook sales are under pressure as consumers continue to favor smartphones and tablets. The declining price of SSDs also will allow them to take away some share from conventional HDDs.”

ISuppli also expects that gross and operating margins for hard drive manufacturers will continue to decline thanks to price erosion in the market. Despite declining profits, the research firm predicts that hard drives will continue to be the dominant form of storage during 2013, particularly in the ultrabook and business realms.

The price of storage is still an issue for me. Adding 6TB of SSDs to my raid isn't exactly cost effective. Unfortunately for HDDs, the price of SSDs are dropping faster than HDDs so it's only a matter of time.

I'd keep buying HDDs buy prices haven't really come down since the floods a year and a half ago.

"Unfortunately for HDDs, the price of SSDs are dropping faster than HDDs so it's only a matter of time."

HAMR (heat-assisted magnetic recording) might take 3.5" HDD's to 60TB+ but it seems it might not go into actual manufacturing until 2016.

It looks like we will get 5.6TB drives from WD this year.and possibly 6TB or larger drives with TDK's new thermal assisted magnetic head in 2014.

I still hope that SSD continue drop in price and increase in reliability.. SSD would be nice for external storage drives since they have no moving parts and are hopefully not easily damaged if moving wile in use etc.

SSD's might eventually replace the traditional HDD as storage drives, but I guess it will still take many years before that happends.

So with a spinning drive you go up in size by 50% but probably gain 10% in speed.

At a certain point these drives become useless. I have a 7 X 4TB drive raid that has been building since 9:30 and it's only at 85%. If they cant step the speed along with the capacity traditional HDD makers have no chance.